In medical care, thoracentesis and paracentesis is typically performed by hand pumping, to achieve the peristaltic movement of excess fluid in a patient's body into drainage bags for disposal or syringes for laboratory analysis or any other medical use. Hand pumping is time consuming and requires a person to be in attendance at all times. Further, the attendant must manually perform the hand pumping necessary to sustain the peristaltic movement. It is difficult to generate consistent suction forces using hand pumping. Depending upon the amount of excess fluid, hand pumping may take several hours of manual labor.
A peristaltic pump can be used for thoracentesis and paracentesis to solve at least some of the above problems. Unfortunately, tubing can be incorrectly connected to the pump, such as by having the tubing loaded into the pump in a reversed direction, causing fluid to be improperly pumped into/out of a patient. In some instances, this can lead to significant injury to the patient or death.
Additionally, some existing tube coupling systems depend on the user to hand-tighten a feature that secures the tubing to the pump. Hand-tightened connections present inconsistency in the securing of the tubing and result in some instances of the tubing being insufficiently secured and other instances of it being secured with too much force. Insufficiently secured tubing can migrate within the pump and can result in decreased pumping action and/or a tension on a section of tubing extending to or from the pump. In some instances, tension on a tubing section may result in discomfort to the patient. However, in other instances, tension on a tubing section may result in the tubing (or an attached component such as a catheter) being pulled out of a patient and/or the tubing becoming disconnected from a drainage bag. Tubing secured with too much force, on the other hand, can cause a constriction in the tubing that restricts fluid flow through the tube and decreases the efficacy of the therapy. Furthermore, too much constriction may also result in damage to the tube and/or cause a catastrophic failure (e.g., tearing the tube) when a tensile force is exerted on the tube. Thus, there is need for improvement in this field.